Tales of Adventure #1

Book 2 The Necromancer’s Lair-2

He did not wait for the man servant to respond, but strode over to the far end of the alcove. Moving slowly, he tapped the flat of his axe against the cave wall. A metallic "tink" rang out, almost eclipsing the softer ring of the stone as the metal touched it. Not particularly melodious, but true - the wall was solid there.

Gareth continued in that manner, ranging up and down the wall at random as he eased his way around the alcove, until he met Hatherle halfway around, as planned.

"Anything?"

The man servant just shrugged. "Sounds solid to me, my lord."

"Hmmph."

Gareth frowned at the stone wall for a long moment, his thoughts whirling. He had been so sure! The wasted time and effort rankled, but more than that the thought that another may have already breached the Tower's walls ahead of him drove a spike of irritation that bordered on rage into him.

"If I may suggest..."

"Stow it, Hatherle!" Gareth could not keep himself from shouting.

Hatherle blanched and drew back on himself, his already slight frame seeming to shrivel as he recoiled from his Lord's anger.

His Lord. Gareth had no claim to that title. Nor did he want one. Why would the little fellow not listen when he explained that? It was almost enough to bring the rage full-on for a moment. Then Gareth got ahold of himself, forced himself back to calm. Or at least just more-than-mild irritation. He knew exactly why Hatherle had sworn to him, why he called Gareth his Lord.

And Gareth did not have the heart to force that devotion from him.

He drew a deep breath and forced the last of his anger away. "I'm sorry, Hatherle," he said, making his tone as kind as he could.

Hatherle blinked. He actually looked confused. "No need to apologize, my Lord. I serve at your pleasure."

How to explain? The issue almost made Gareth angry again, but he was back in control. "Nevermind. Let's go. We'll take the short, direct way. Straight through the front door." He barked out a laugh that he hoped sounded confident. "That ol' Necromancer will never expect something like that."

Gareth turned and walked back toward the ledge, his earlier trepidation about taking it forgotten, at least for the moment. The sound of Hatherle clearing his throat brought him to a halt.

Gareth looked back at Hatherle over his shoulder. "What?"

Hatherle gave the slightest of shrugs. "I go where you go, my Lord, but..."

"Out with it, man."

Hatherle frowned. "Not to contradict you, but I suspect the Necromancer expects that very thing. He counts on it, and has his defenses arrayed against it. The odds of success, or even survival, in a frontal assault are..."

"Never tell me the odds."

Hatherle's teeth clacked together and he managed a rueful smile. "Pardon, my Lord. I forgot."

Gareth looked at the slender man servant for half a minute, then rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "Well what do you suggest?"

"My Lord, I would not presume..."

Gareth's stare carried daggers. Hatherle's speech slowed and came to a halt beneath its weight. Finally, he made a vague gesture toward the top of the ceiling, where the dome reached its zenith.

Gareth frowned and walked over to the center of the alcove. As he stepped beneath the ceiling's zenith, it was like a key turning in a lock. He suddenly saw what Hatherly was referring to. Standing exactly there, the patterns of the rock came together and formed a sigil of a wolf biting the neck of a fallen deer, the sigil of the Necromancer Gareth presumed. The wolf's eyes were open. They stared behind Gareth and to his right...toward the stone floor.

Gareth turned around and looked down toward where the wolf was gazing. There, he saw a circle surrounding a five-pointed star inlaid into the ground.

He felt his eyes going wide as his jaw dropped. "Hatherle," he began. Then he caught himself as a realization hit him. He rounded on the slender man, his earlier anger rekindled. "You knew?"

Hatherle shook his head. "I saw the sigil in the ceiling, yes..."

"Why the hell didn't you say anything?" Gareth felt his heart rate beginning to climb.

"I was sure you would find it, my Lord." He smiled, his face becoming pure admiration and devotion. "It was not my place to interrupt."

Gareth bit back a curse, instead grinding his teeth to keep a vicious tongue-lashing from spewing forth. He glared at Hatherle for a minute - the man did not have the grace to look embarrassed - then sighed and looked back at the star and circle on the ground.

"Well...what do you make of this?"

Hatherle walked up next to Gareth, his expression curious. When he stopped beneath the sigil on the ceiling and followed Gareth's pointing finger with his gaze, his eyes widened.

"I did not see that, my Lord," he began. His lips pursed together. "Interesting. As you well know, that symbol is used by magicians and wizards everywhere, as the center of a summoning circle."

Gareth knew no such thing, but he did know better than to interrupt when Hatherle went on a tear. He nodded, putting on an encouraging grin - or at least one he hoped was encouraging. But Hatherle seemed not to notice as he kept right on talking.

"The symbol's power constrains the beings the wizard summons, allows him a certain amount of control during the meeting." Hatherle's tongue clicked behind his front teeth. "I suspect a Necromancer would be especially comfortable with this symbol. The dead are...quite unhappy...when disturbed." He cleared his throat. "Or so I hear."

Gareth supposed Hatherle's last comment made sense. Sort of.

"So now we know the Necromancer was here at some point." Gareth left the area beneath the ceiling's zenith and stepped toward the symbol on the floor.

He half expected the symbol to fade from his vision when he left the zenith, but it did not. It was as though once unlocked, the symbols were easily seen. On a hunch, he looked back at the zenith. The wolf sigil was still there. Yep, whatever it was that had prevented him from seeing it before was gone.

Gareth wished that did not make him feel so frightened.

He crouched down and examined the symbol. From up close, it almost appeared to be etched into the floor. But that did not make any sense; if it had been, he would have seen it before. Setting his axe down, he ran his fingers along the symbol. Sure enough, the lines of the star and circle were recessed into the stone of the floor.

"I'll be damned," Gareth murmured.

"I should hope not, my Lord."

Hatherle's ears were entirely too keen sometimes. Rather than respond, Gareth just grunted and went back to examining the symbol. The edges of the lines were abrupt, hardly weathered at all. Which was not surprising considering how little traffic came through this cave. All the same, that meant they had been made relatively recently.

Gareth traced out the lines of the symbol again, more slowly. There was something...

"Well how about that?" Gareth looked up at Hatherle. "The engraving is a bit deeper at each point of the star, see?"

Hatherle frowned slightly and crouched down next to Gareth. After a moment, he nodded.

"Indeed, my Lord. And it looks like there is something embedded within, as well."

Gareth blinked and lowered his head to examine the points of the star more closely. As he did so, he moved the torch, now back in his left hand, and he saw a glint of reflected light from one of the points.

"Is that metal?"

Hatherle shrugged. "It does appear so, my Lord."

Gareth bit his lip in thought for a moment. This was becoming more and more interesting. Clearly the necromancer had left this symbol here, and gone to no small amount of effort to do so. Maybe...

"Maybe it's like a doorknob," he said, voicing his thoughts aloud.

Hatherle shrugged again, but did not reply.

Gareth glanced at him and sighed. Sometimes the man's penchant for speaking his thoughts became annoying, but he was knowledgable about many things; scholars and sages were useful that way. But he seemed to pick the strangest times to go silent, and that was almost more annoying.

"Back up, Hatherle. I'm going to try something, and I have no idea what it's going to do."

"As you wish, my Lord." The slender man stood and moved over to the wall. Gareth noted he was right near the ledge, no doubt ready to make a quick escape if things went badly wrong.

Smart man.

"Here goes nothing."

Gareth kept a dagger sheathed on his belt, opposite the iron ring that he slung the haft of his axe through when he did not want to carry it. He withdrew the dagger, hardly noticing the familiar sound of steel drawing across hardened leather, and paused.

Where to begin? There were no markings to make any one point of the star more important than another. No indication of where to start and where to end. If Gareth had put this little contraption together, he would make sure to have something horrible happen to a person who did not execute it correctly. It only made sense the Necromancer would have done the same.

But there was no way to know that without trying, was there?

"I am a sodding fool," he muttered, then he pressed the tip of his dagger into the lower right point on the star.

Scarlet light, somehow beautiful despite its unearthly hue, began shining from the point as soon as the steel of the dagger made contact. The glow continued after Gareth removed the dagger, but nothing untoward occurred. He must be on the right track; he was not dead.

Yet.

Moving with careful slowness, he pressed the tip of the dagger into the remaining four points of the star. Each time, the points began glowing just as the first one did. As he removed the dagger from the final point, Gareth felt a certain satisfaction, and he grinned. Turns out this little riddle was not so difficult, after all.

He rocked back on his heels and his grin faded. The points of light were dimmer...or was that his imagination?

No, they were dimmer. What...

The lights went out.

"Damnit! What the hell just happened?"

Hatherle was next to him again; Gareth had not noticed his approach, so caught up in the moment he had been. He had to resist the urge to slap himself. That was the sort of carelessness that could get them both killed.

"I suspect," Hatherle began, rubbing at his chin with the fingers of his left hand, "that you are correct about this device's purpose, my Lord. It may well open a portal of some sort. But it will need to work as a whole, not as a collection of individual parts."

Gareth blinked. "Come again?"

Hatherle gave him a look that said he was missing the forest for the trees. "The star is a series of lines, not a set of five points."

The realization hit Gareth in a flash. i***t! He should not have needed Hatherle to come to that conclusion.

Grumbling, Gareth thrust the tip of his dagger into the lower right point on the star. This time, he did not remove the dagger but instead traced the star out, line by line and point by point, until he had completed the entire thing. As he did, the glow began from the first point, then continued down the line to the second, getting brighter as it went. By the time he was tracing out the line between the fourth and fifth points, the glow was bright enough that he had to squint to avoid being dazzled.

Done! Gareth pulled his dagger from the engraving, and the circle began glowing on its own, a blue glow this time that complimented the star's crimson but also added to the glare so much that he had to look away.

He saw Hatherle, shielding his eyes with a raised hand, a look of surprised awe on his face.